As part of our female innovation series, we explore the work of Ida Tin, whose personalised womens' health app was conceived after the birth of her daughter

Author: Beena Nadeem

25 Jul 2017

Ida Tin is about as pan-European as one can get. The 37-year-old Dane lives in Berlin, with her German partner Hans – who also happens to be co-founder of her business Clue.

If there wasn’t a better way of knowing how your product works – you test it out. The result was that one of her children, Eleanor, was conceived using it. Clue is a personalised health app, which learns the patterns of a woman’s body and cycles.

“I was about 30 the pill wasn’t working well for me and I realised that there had been little innovation in this space for the past 50 years,” Tin said.

Tin, who also coined the term ‘femtech’ to define technologies supporting women’s healthcare, is a strong believer that women shouldn’t have to choose between their careers and a family. As such, children are welcome at Clue’s offices, and parents can take as much leave as they feel necessary once their baby is born. Staff can also take advantage of anything from yoga to one-on-one counselling sessions and, to top it off, can even bring their dogs into the office too.

Through partnerships with two universities, Clue can now research women’s health in more depth, providing more data-driven insights

Although Clue doesn’t have a typical user – with the app attracting anyone from fathers interested in learning about their daughters’ health through to someone planning a pregnancy – the app does seem to have a wide appeal, already attracting five million users worldwide.

And, through partnerships with two universities, Stanford and Oxford, Clue can now research women’s health in more depth, something Tin believes can provide more data-driven insights and help monetise the app.

Tin has never felt like being a woman has thrown any obstacles in her path, as she’s proved by running global motorcycle tours and penning an international bestseller about her travels, Direktøs. Before that, she studied at Denmark’s famous creative business school KaosPilot.

Tin said: “I’ve always been strong willed, so if I want to do something, I usually do. Growing up, I travelled all over the world with my parents so setting up a motorcycle tour wasn’t really a leap for me.

“I wrote my book during a solo tour. It started out as a personal project, but when I was finished, I found a publisher and had my work published. I realised then I needed a scalable business, which tours aren’t.

“This is at the same time I dreamed up Clue. I felt strongly that not just me, but all women, could benefit from such a product, so was empowered to make Clue a reality.”